Samsung has delayed the launch of the Galaxy Tab 2 7. UX.

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The second-generation Samsung Galaxy Tab has been delayed because the company needs more time to get its software working with Android 4.0—specifically, Samsung's TouchWiz skin. IDGreports that the 7-inch and 10.1-inch tablets are now set to ship at the end of April.

Samsung created the flagship Android 4.0 device, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and recently started rolling out the new OS version to its Galaxy S II. But the use of TouchWiz on Android 4.0 hasn't impressed users much so far: The Vergefelt that the TouchWiz-ified Android 4.0 on the Galaxy S II kept the OS looking and feeling very much like Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

The Galaxy Tab 2 series tablets both have 1GHz dual-core processors, up to 32GB of storage, and access to 3G and WiFi. The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 will have a 1024x600 resolution screen, while the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1's screen will be 1280x800.

Once the two tablets receive their TouchWiz treatment, they will reach the UK in April, a Samsung spokesperson told IDG. The tablets are set for a global rollout following the UK launch.

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Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

Glad I didn't buy a Samsung Tab and instead bought a ASUS Transformer -- have had ICS on it for about a month, and have already had further updates to it as well (running 4.0.3). ASUS has treated their customers well by providing many OS updates to their devices.

At this point in time, I think the best way for a handset manufacturer to differentiate itself in the Android market is to ship vanilla Android. Ship with slick hardware, three smart phones a year (high end to low end), and develop some apps to make the Android experience even better.

At this point in time, I think the best way for a handset manufacturer to differentiate itself in the Android market is to ship vanilla Android.

It sounds like that is the rarest variation of Android being used. Everyone else wants to mung up the interface with their marketing-driven look-and-feel.

Personally, I think they should ship a model with a strict command-line interface, and include a printed quick-reference guide for the most commonly-used commands. Green monospace text agains a black background FTW!

That also means the Galaxy S III won't come out until the end of April at the earliest as well.

And has there been a single consumer ever that said "I will buy the HTC or Samsung or whatever because of how they screwed up the stock Android UI and I prefer their bloatware crap"?

Edit: I should note that up to this point, I was seriously considering the Galaxy S III for my next phone. I'm rethinking that now.

I have a Galaxy Nexus, and if given a choice, I would actually pay for a copy of HTCs weather widget. I know there are copies on the app store, but none of them actually look as good. (Or seem to have the same options as the version on the HTC Sensation)

I wouldn't want any other stuff that HTC includes, but the weather widget they have is great and purty

The Verge felt that the TouchWiz-ified Android 4.0 on the Galaxy S II kept the OS looking and feeling very much like Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Is that a bad thing? It seems to imply stability between updates.

"feel" is a de facto standard by which mobile device interfaces are judged. Which says quite a bit about the value of these judgements. Not necessarily that they are wrong, but that a lot of these differences are subjective and therefore should be experienced by the prospective buyer, rather than blindly believed.

But people here in the UK are complaining hard and loud to Samsung about these delays because it keeps the precious ICS out of their hands. Because, you know, free Android OS updates get special mention in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as in-alienable and God-given and how will their less than 2 year old mobile device ever live to see 3 without it?

Dang, I've been waiting eagerly for ICS on my Galaxy Tab 8.9. TouchWiz on Honeycomb is fine as far as it goes.. the system preference widgets in the notification slider are very nice, and the pop-up mini-apps you can trigger from the center of the system bar are moderately convenient, but the Samsung graphical theme is pretty vanilla. I'd be delighted to have the Honeycomb / ICS Holo theme instead, but I understand that I'm way more geeky than the average market that Samsung is trying to sell to.

But people here in the UK are complaining hard and loud to Samsung about these delays because it keeps the precious ICS out of their hands. Because, you know, free Android OS updates get special mention in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as in-alienable and God-given and how will their less than 2 year old mobile device ever live to see 3 without it?

The problem here is that the skinning on top of android is causing the fragmentation. It is stopping the vendors from pushing out badly needed security updates, patches and better versions of Android.

This is akin to a custom skin on Windows (pick ur version) on your computer and you not being able to use windows updates because of an custom GUI on top of Windows GUI.

What needs to happen is that the vendors ship their skins as an addon that can be turned on and off in the settings but still have the base OS unfettered.

That also means the Galaxy S III won't come out until the end of April at the earliest as well.

And has there been a single consumer ever that said "I will buy the HTC or Samsung or whatever because of how they screwed up the stock Android UI and I prefer their bloatware crap"?

Edit: I should note that up to this point, I was seriously considering the Galaxy S III for my next phone. I'm rethinking that now.

I have a Galaxy Nexus, and if given a choice, I would actually pay for a copy of HTCs weather widget. I know there are copies on the app store, but none of them actually look as good. (Or seem to have the same options as the version on the HTC Sensation)

I wouldn't want any other stuff that HTC includes, but the weather widget they have is great and purty

Beautiful Widgets' 4x1 SuperClock has been a great (and less space-consuming) replacement for me.

Can someone explain to me what the point of these skins is? Everyone hates them, with the possible exception of Sense. Why do this? Why do they think they can't compete or differentiate on the quality/design of their hardware?

This is insane. Manufacturers take almost as much time to upgrade a few devices in their lineup as Google takes bringing the next Android version to the market.Essentially they deny the users the new Android version (which the users want) because they can't adapt their own modifications (which users don't want). I guess some managers have a degree in "shooting yourself in the foot".

Can someone explain to me what the point of these skins is? Everyone hates them, with the possible exception of Sense. Why do this? Why do they think they can't compete or differentiate on the quality/design of their hardware?

I suspect its something easy to put on a checklist and show/explain to management. "TouchWiz differentiates us" is probably something that's been said so many times internally that people actually believe it.

I suppose this means our update won't be here until the end of April as well. *sigh* It's really not a big deal - the device is awesome as-is, but one always like the new bright and shiny object.

I just wish the manufacturers would get their update act together. It's as if they don't realize that now they're not only into the computer business, but the OS business as well. Until they realize that, we're going to have to deal with delays like this.

Can someone explain to me what the point of these skins is? Everyone hates them, with the possible exception of Sense. Why do this? Why do they think they can't compete or differentiate on the quality/design of their hardware?

It's because these manufacturers making Android devices are competing against each other more than they're competing against Apple. Their stuff has to look different from another's. If not, when you walk into a store that has them, they'll all look the same, and why would you buy one over the other?

It's like the Windows PC market. People go into Best Buy or some other store and buy the cheapest PC. Most of them look the same outside, and the screen has the same Windows OS. Tablet and phones makers are trying to have the screen, at least, look and work differently.

You've also got to realize that they do believe their skin is better. And since for phones at least, Samsung is by far the most popular Android maker, they figure it should work for tablets as well, even though recently they admitted that their tablet sales were "poor".

And has there been a single consumer ever that said "I will buy the HTC or Samsung or whatever because of how they screwed up the stock Android UI and I prefer their bloatware crap"?

I didn't pick my phone that way, but after trying several alternative launchers, I've come to appreciate the sanity of some of TouchWiz 2.3's UI choices. Namely:

- Ability to set a non-scrolling 1-screen-size wallpaper; most launchers only support the weird 2-screen size that moves around when you swipe between homescreens.- Homescreen swiping loops around when you reach your left- or rightmost screen, and actually animates that way, as opposed to shooting off in the opposite direction of your swipe. (The background still moves the opposite way though, unless you use a 1-screen-size wallpaper, which is why I prefer the latter.)- The app tray works the same as the homescreens: horizontal page-by-page, with looping. I'm glad to hear ICS adopted this setup, except I don't know if it loops. (Googling this question always turns up results about "boot loops." Go Android.)

The only thing I really hate about TouchWiz is the noncustomizable bottom row. Other than that, the only other launcher I've found that covers all the above bases is Go Launcher EX.

That also means the Galaxy S III won't come out until the end of April at the earliest as well.

And has there been a single consumer ever that said "I will buy the HTC or Samsung or whatever because of how they screwed up the stock Android UI and I prefer their bloatware crap"?

Edit: I should note that up to this point, I was seriously considering the Galaxy S III for my next phone. I'm rethinking that now.

Actually, I'm quite a fan of Sense, after seeing how smoothly it ran on the Evo Shift; it's not dragging anything down on that phone, and I'd assume this it the case with many, if not all, current HTC phones. It also adds many useful features that could hardly be classified as bloatware. Perhaps the eye-candy is bloat, but I like that, too. That aside, my main reason for getting any HTC phone is the hardware and build quality.

That said, these custom GUIs and extended feature sets seem to be as much, if not more of an impediment to timely updates than the normal planned obsolescence these phones have to keep users enticed to sign new contracts. I'd rather see a more homogenized feature set (more collaboration between OEMs and the AOSP) and timely updates, with OEMs competing more on tangible qualities like the CPU, GPU, build quality, and more frequent OS updates with fewer new issues cropping up. Hell, they can even keep up the inane race to the bottom on thinness for touchscreen potato chips.

Also, I'd take a wait-and-see attitude for any Samsung phone after being burned twice. They seem to be slowly getting better about it, but they tend to drag their feet on updates, even for phones without TW, and in the case of at least the Galaxy S and earlier phones, updates could either get retracted mid-rollout over issues, or left with said issues until EOL.

At this point in time, I think the best way for a handset manufacturer to differentiate itself in the Android market is to ship vanilla Android. Ship with slick hardware, three smart phones a year (high end to low end), and develop some apps to make the Android experience even better.

You couldn't literally do three smartphones a year (assuming you're not Apple). The carriers would insist on at least superficial differentiation in order to invest any marketing resources in it.

I also doubt that the simple line-up would work well for an Android OEM. When the platform is activating 850,000 handsets a day, that means tech-savvy/informed buyers make up only a very small fraction of your sales. If Samsung has 9 models on display at the local carrier store or Radio Shack and you have 1 model, more often than not the average buyer is going to walk out with a Samsung. You can only get away with having a couple models if you have overwhelming brand awareness (e.g., Apple).

After using ICS on the Galaxy Nexus, I wish someone would build a "Nexus" (pure ICS) tablet. I realize manufacturers feel they need to differentiate their flavor of Android from those of competing vendors. But skinning too often results in a poor user experience.

After using ICS on the Galaxy Nexus, I wish someone would build a "Nexus" (pure ICS) tablet. I realize manufacturers feel they need to differentiate their flavor of Android from those of competing vendors. But skinning too often results in a poor user experience.

among others. Every time a new version of Android comes out, we all complain that it's finally perfect, and these skins are no longer necessary. In reality, OEM's have continued to come up with (in some cases) useful features that will eventually make their way into the next version of Android.

I'm not denying that, in many cases, OEM's screw this up badly. The Touchwiz skin that Samsung included in their ICS build for my Galaxy SII is terrible, and the reason I'm running Cyanogenmod. However, it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that ICS is perfect, and there's absolutely no way that OEM's can improve upon it.

Case in point? Cyanogenmod includes an option to swipe along the status bar to change brightness, and toggle shortcuts for WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. in the notification area. Both of these are taken directly from Touchwiz, yet the creators of Cyanogenmod feel that they are worthwhile inclusions into ICS.

SNIPrew"]A- The app tray works the same as the homescreens: horizontal page-by-page, with looping. I'm glad to hear ICS adopted this setup, except I don't know if it loops. (Googling this question always turns up results about "boot loops." Go Android.) SNIP

No looping. widgets are just the icons that come after your app pages though, or you can skip directly to them with a tab at the top. configured that way, looping makes less sense, because you'd have to swipe through all your widgets before you get back to the beginning.

To echo other's comments, it seems the best way to distinguish your mobile device from all the other mobile devices on the market is by shipping the stock Android OS without any of the 'touch wiz', 'motoblur', or 'htc sense' nonsense.

There's what, like 5 phones that have the basic Android OS these days, maybe 2 of which have modern hardware?

That also means the Galaxy S III won't come out until the end of April at the earliest as well.

And has there been a single consumer ever that said "I will buy the HTC or Samsung or whatever because of how they screwed up the stock Android UI and I prefer their bloatware crap"?

Edit: I should note that up to this point, I was seriously considering the Galaxy S III for my next phone. I'm rethinking that now.

I have a Galaxy Nexus, and if given a choice, I would actually pay for a copy of HTCs weather widget. I know there are copies on the app store, but none of them actually look as good. (Or seem to have the same options as the version on the HTC Sensation)

I wouldn't want any other stuff that HTC includes, but the weather widget they have is great and purty

Fancy Widget Pro, that I got for free from Amazon's app store, is pretty damn close.

Android 4.0 is far and away better than Android 2.3 with an overlay. Sense was good, IMO, but not as good as Stock 4.0, and Novalauncher makes Stock 4.0 even better.

My wife couldn't care less about touchwiz on her Tab 10.1. ICS now plz. I have a Transformer prime and 4.0 is so much nicer.

To echo other's comments, it seems the best way to distinguish your mobile device from all the other mobile devices on the market is by shipping the stock Android OS without any of the 'touch wiz', 'motoblur', or 'htc sense' nonsense.

There's what, like 5 phones that have the basic Android OS these days, maybe 2 of which have modern hardware?

More to the point, do users even care? I've been a Windows/Apple user with one Android phone in there. I have no idea what was unique to that specific phone from the vendor and what was Android, I wouldn't be able to tell you the difference between any of the UI additions, I care about the phone and that it's running a modern version of Android (which I do understand).

If anything, everything I've read in the past few years has suggested that stock Android is better. Every single time. HTC may have been an improvement on the old WinMo phones but Google do have a small amount of design sense built into the OS, it should be taken advantage of.

After using ICS on the Galaxy Nexus, I wish someone would build a "Nexus" (pure ICS) tablet. I realize manufacturers feel they need to differentiate their flavor of Android from those of competing vendors. But skinning too often results in a poor user experience.

Transformer/Transformer Prime? There's no skin (there are some optional widgets).